Q1 2023 for Persistence can be best summarized in a single word—’Rollout’. With the native launch of pSTAKE in Jan 2023 & Dexter in March 2023, the liquid staking hub of Cosmos has started moulding itself into the one-stop for all things liquid staking— LST issuance & DeFi.
This quarterly recap looks at all the key highlights and milestones for the Persistence Ecosystem during Q1 2023.
Key Updates
Q1 saw some significant tech advancements which facilitated the launch of pSTAKE & Dexter in a safe & robust environment.
- The v6 chain upgrade untombstoned 5 jailed validators & adjusted stkATOM’s exchange rate on the chain, leading to a successful launch of pSTAKE for Cosmos.
- The v7 chain upgrade was all about efficiency. It updated several vital components, including cosmos-sdk, informal system’s tendermint fork, wasmd, ibc-go, persistence-sdk, pstake-native, automated testing, and Cosmovisor auto-download function.
- The core-1 team prepped for Dexter’s landing by providing a chain infrastructure to deploy CosmWasm-based dApps, including a stable version of CosmWasm and a graph node setup to access indexed data easily.
- Core-1 chain’s IBC channel network was expanded to facilitate interconnectivity with other Cosmos chains like Axelar, Crescent, Kujira, Quicksilver, Stride, etc.
- The Persistence Foundation Delegation Program Round 1 concluded, and a revamped Round 2 was launched to uphold a secure, transparent, and inclusive liquid staking hub for all. The program has helped make the Persistence chain’s validator set one of the most decentralized in the Cosmos ecosystem, as per the Observatory zone.
- Significant progress was made in the research of deploying an Oracle & the LSM (Liquid Staking Module) by Zaki & Iqlusion on the chain.
Governance proposals
Q1 2023 was a busy period for $XPRT stakers & validators, with 8 on-chain proposals with record turnout, indicating increased growth and development.
- Prop #12: Upgrade v6 PersistenceCore
- Prop #13: 450k $XPRT Grant for Dexter
- Prop #15: Whitelist Dexter team’s address for permissionless code storage and instantiation
- Prop #16: Parameters Change for better distribution of inflation
- Prop #18: Increase Minimum Validator Fee to 5%
- Prop #19: Upgrade v7 PersistenceCore
- Prop #20: Update Instantiate Config of LP Token and Pool Codes for Dexter
- Prop #21: 1M $XPRT incentives to bootstrap deeper XPRT liquidity
Foundation Delegation Program
The Persistence Foundation Delegation Program, launched in December 2022, is an initiative to improve the overall health and robustness of the Persistence network. The program provides support to contributing validators in the form of foundation delegations.
Round 1
During the first round, 67 validators filled out the application, of which 42 received the delegation. The Validator Nakamoto Coefficient, which measures the level of decentralization, improved from 4 to 8, making Persistence one of the most decentralized networks in Cosmos. The average commission rate came down to 9.96%.
Round 2
Based on validators’ and community feedback, Round 2 was launched in March 2023. It also allowed new validators to receive a small initial delegation from the foundation to secure a spot in the active set, provided they meet specific criteria. The program enforces a 5% minimum commission. Additionally, the window for slashing history has been reduced from six to three months. In this round, 64 applications were received, 310 nodes were provided & 750 validator contributions were submitted.
#BuiltOnPersistence
pSTAKE
pSTAKE is a multi-chain liquid staking protocol built by Persistence. It allows users to liquid-stake PoS assets like ATOM, BNB, & ETH to earn staking rewards and participate in DeFi without locking liquidity.
pSTAKE for Cosmos launched natively on the Persistence Core-1 chain with its non-custodial liquid staking solution for ATOM (stkATOM) on 12 January 2023, kickstarting TVL on the chain. Since then, 267,232.97 ATOM (~$3.4M) has been liquid staked on cosmos.pstake.finance. $stkATOM has ~$2.8M in liquidity across prominent Cosmos DEXs like Dexter, Osmosis, & Crescent.
Everything you need to know about stkATOM can be found here.
Dexter
Dexter, the Interchain DEX for yield-generating assets like liquid-staked assets, went live on the Persistence Mainnet on 27 March 2023. Dexter v1 kickstarts DeFi on the chain by bringing innovative AMM mechanisms like Weighted, Stableswap, & Metastable pools.
Dexter surpassed $1M in TVL in just two weeks after launch on the following two pools:
- ATOM/XPRT weighted pool with incentives in XPRT
- stkATOM/ATOM Metastable pool with incentives in ATOM, stkATOM, XPRT, and PSTAKE.
Before its Mainnet launch, the Dexter team ran an incentivized testnet on the Persistence Chain with the participation of 400+ users performing 38,000+ transactions.
Dexter is also one of the first DEXs in Cosmos to offer Metastable pools, a highly efficient pool type for liquid-staked assets. Dexter & pSTAKE usher in a new era for Liquid Staking UX—hop from http://cosmos.pstake.finance to http://app.dexter.zone.
Don’t miss any updates from the Dexter team by joining its Discord here.
Bamboo
Bamboo, a Lending protocol for Yield-Generating Assets in the Interchain, came out of stealth and published its vision to launch on the Persistence Core-1 chain.
Stay up-to-date with the Bamboo team by joining their Discord community here.
Ecosystem Integrations
- Observatory released a Persistence dashboard to track the network score, validator scores, Nakamoto coefficient, and more. With a Validator Nakamoto coefficient of 9, Persistence is among Cosmos’s top 3 most decentralized chains.
- Pulsar Finance integrated pSTAKE into its platform, allowing users to track their stkATOM holdings.
- DeFiLlama started tracking Persistence, pSTAKE, and Dexter.
- Leap wallet introduced new features for Persistence, enabling support for governance participation and coin type 118.
- pSTAKE launched its Migration utility that allows its ERC-20 users to migrate stkATOM (ERC-20) & pATOM to stkATOM and stkXPRT(ERC-20) & pXPRT to XPRT in a single click.
- TFM bridge integrated Persistence chain, allowing transfer of assets to and from Persistence Core-1 chain across IBC-enabled chains.
- Informal, Stake & Relax, Genesis Lab, and Kitkat started validating on the network.
- Ceffu was announced as the custody partner for $PSTAKE.
- $HARBOR was airdropped to $XPRT stakers
- Frontier wallet enabled support for Persistence Core-1 chain and native $XPRT staking.
Persistence has made significant progress towards becoming the Liquid Staking Hub of Cosmos regarding the necessary chain infrastructure & products deployed on the chain. While Q1 was focused on ‘Rollout’, the goal for Q2 remains ‘Traction’. With new stkASSETs issued by pSTAKE and new features & liquidity pools coming to Dexter in Q2, traction is the word for the dApps #BuiltOnPersistence.
Other exciting things to look forward to in Q2 include the v8 chain upgrade, enabling IBC v6, adding the Liquid Staking Module, keeping an eye for third-party integrations, improving indexer setup, & increasing performance monitoring. These building blocks will allow more projects to deploy on the liquid staking hub of Cosmos smoothly.
Join us on this journey, and stay tuned!
About Persistence
Persistence is a cosmos app chain for LSTfi (liquid staking finance) with the issuance of & DeFi for LSTs.
The Persistence core-1 chain hosts pSTAKE Finance–a multi-chain liquid staking protocol for issuing LSTs that allows users to earn staking rewards while participating in DeFi primitives, Dexter–the Interchain DEX for yield-generating assets like LSTs.
Persistence aims to offer a one-stop shop for liquid staking for PoS (Proof-of-Stake) users and enable developers to build innovative applications around LSTs.
Become a Persister today!
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